


reconcile the violence in your heart

by otterlymagic



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Older Man/Younger Man, Past Kylo Ren/Tai, Submissive Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:21:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otterlymagic/pseuds/otterlymagic
Summary: Ben Solo has left his old life behind to join the Knights of Ren. The Dark Side brought him to them, but it's not the Dark Side that makes him stay. Whether he wants to admit it or not. But after a lifetime among other Jedi trainees, being taught only Jedi principles, there's a lot he doesn't know about what he wants. (ON HIATUS/POTENTIALLY TO BE ABANDONED)
Relationships: Ren (Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren)/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 35
Kudos: 36





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I intended this to be a smutty Renlo oneshot but, uh, the characters wanted something more slow burn and plotty. This is more or less what I want Rise of Kylo Ren #4 to be, and know I will not get. It's not a darkfic but it is a shipfic involving Dark Side aligned characters and all the moral ambiguity you'd expect from that.
> 
> (Content warnings for this chapter: drunkenness)

As the sun sets over Ar’ana Outpost on a world that honestly Ben has forgotten the name of, the sky is clouded out with vasts mountains of smoke. Flames dance up towards the pinks and tangerines staining the clouds while bystanders flee and scream, and the sands beneath are stained with purple-black patches of blood.

Ben stands and watches, thinking that maybe he will always be here, watching fires of destruction. The people of this planet run, panicking, screaming, unaware of what brought danger to them—unaware that they did nothing to earn this, that it is simply the chaos of Ren. 

Some of the Knights take down the local militia as they vainly try to defend the outpost. Their hearts aren’t in it. They’re paid to guard storehouses for a corporation, but not enough to spend their lives for it. Yet it is their livelihood and so they will either die now, quickly, or later, slowly. The galaxy is cruel that way. Some people like the cruelty; Ben hears Ushar laughing louder than the cries of pain. He hadn’t heard any screams when the Jedi Temple burned, he thinks. He’s not sure he likes that he can hear them now.

But the roar of the fire drowns out the voices in his head, so Ben looks to the raging blaze and lifts his hand and, with a rush of power that nearly knocks him over, he makes the flames rise higher. The Force pulses in his blood with hedonistic abandon now that he no longer spends all his energy holding it back. It is as if it’s burning him from the inside out. Everything burns. Everything is destruction.

It is better than being empty, so he lets himself be carried on the tide.

Ren stands like a monument to death and darkness in the town square across from the burning building, while the other Knights knock down the last defendants and begin to loot. Even from behind the mask, Ben can feel the man’s stare. He is used to the feeling of being watched, after all.

_ This is what that boy is destined for, _ so many voices had whispered over the years when they thought he couldn’t hear, when his anger had gotten the best of him despite all his efforts. Parents, teachers, peers, and more, until it felt like the entire galaxy chanting the same refrain. Yet this man, Ren, has doubts that Ben is meant for destruction. So let him watch this.

When the looting is done, Ben raises his hand and clenches it into a fist. The blackened walls crumble into dust, suffocating the remaining flames. One moment there was a chance that it might be recovered and rebuilt—now it is a pile of dust. It is easier this time, when his uncle isn’t standing over him with a lit saber. 

Ren walks across the plain towards him and Ben internally braces, waiting for whatever critique he’s about to receive.

“You use your shadow well,” Ren says, however, and puts a hand on Ben’s shoulder. His palm is slick with blood and it smears over Ben’s new black jacket. Though the touch is heavy, his tone is casual and contemplative. “But I still don’t see you doing what you  _ want _ . Don’t think I haven’t noticed that.”

Ren walks away without waiting for an answer. The other Knights follow him towards the ship and one of them looks at Ben and chuckles under his breath, muted by the mask’s vocorder.

Ben frowns, and his exhale comes out rough and irritated.

Emotion burns at the back of his throat like bile. It’s better than emptiness, but it’s the precursor to resentment and he clenches his hand into a fist. He will  _ not _ be caught in some foolish attempt to prove his worth to these men. The shadow they’re looking for is already strong in him. They’ll see. He will not be desperate just because they are blind.

-

It’s a thought that goes nowhere. He doesn’t have time to be desperate or resentful before the Knights of Ren make it very clear that they don’t care. Not like Ben cares. 

As soon as they’re on the ship, it suddenly smells heavy. The interior is hot and half-lit, and the smell of sweat and death fills the small space.

Ren grabs a stained rag and wipes off the blood from his hands, tossing another one to Vicrul. “I need a drink,” he says. He sits down and takes off his mask, ruffling the grey hair beneath so that it’s not slicked close to his scalp. “Where’s the nearest cantina?”

Kuruk heads toward the cockpit and says, “Just a few klicks out, if we want to avoid anyone who knows what we just did.”

“Please.” Cardo laughs, and were it not for the context, it would sound like innocent mirth. “I might want someone I don’t know in my bed tonight, which generally works out better when they haven’t been made aware that you killed their neighbors.”

Trudgen curses under his breath and gives Cardo a look that Ben doesn’t understand.

Ren laughs. “Go on, Kuruk. Take us out.”

They don’t pay attention to Ben. They don’t even pay much attention to themselves. For all the wild revelry in their shadow, it has no weight to them, and they are moving on with a freedom that is utterly foreign to Ben. He sits and watches, and the fact that he’s wound up with tension feels embarrassing compared to how relaxed his new comrades are. 

Ap’lek laughs over a new strategy that paid off, Trudgen shows off a trophy, and Ushar and Vicrul argue over who had the best kill. Ren listens and watches while he puts a bacta patch over a small cut on his arm. They rack up the kills eventually—mostly officers and troopers, as the civilians had been fast runners. 

“Next time  _ you  _ should get a kill, not just be a kriffing pyro,” Cardo growls, leaning over to hit Ben in the arm. 

It surprises Ben to be noticed.

“Maybe it gets him off,” Ap’lek says, leaning forward over his spread knees and grinning. Without his mask, Ben can see that he’s got wild golden eyes and teeth like a cat. “We don’t judge you for banging every slut you can get your hands on, so let the boy enjoy his fire fetish.”

With both gazes on them, Ben snaps, “I’m not a boy.” He pulls himself out of Cardo’s reach with a hot glare.

Ushar cackles, and Ben fumes, realizing how pathetic he must look. Besides, Ren had called them all “boys”. 

Ren makes a low sound in his throat, though, and meets Ben’s gaze across the hold of the ship. “He’s right. A boy came to us in those ragged robes. We have no reason to call him a child any longer.”

“Whatever,” says Vicrul in a low voice. “He’s still going by Ben Solo.”

“Get a few drinks in him, he’ll pick a new name,” Ap’lek says. “Right?”

“Kylo.” The word comes out with a huff of breath, almost despite his better judgment. It tastes strange on his tongue. “Ben Solo is dead. My name is Kylo.” But there's a thrill that runs through him as he says it, even if it brings pain with it.

“That’s a start,” Ren says. “Well, boys? Let’s show Kylo how we celebrate the expression of Ren.”

-

Celebration is the same all across the galaxy, unless you end up among a group of zealots. The Knights of Ren are not quite that. They’re not some Sith cult, so they behave like normal men. They drink. They eat, gamble, arm wrestle, and more, but mostly they drink.

The cantina eyes them warily, but they claim a few tables and order food and drinks, and no one seems to care that these masked men haven’t cleaned off all their bloodstains. They’re paying and starting no fights. The galaxy is too big, and this place too poor, to care about anything that’s not your own business.

Kylo has never tasted alcohol before. He’s been in exactly one cantina, when he was so young that everyone towered over him and he only remembers hating it and wanting to be back with his mother on Chandrila. Technically, the vast majority of what he knows of life beyond the Jedi Temple has been learned from books and Snoke, though he guards that as a shameful secret. Alcohol, specifically, was not allowed to Jedi trainees.

“Here,” Ushar says and hands him a bottle. 

It’s made of dark glass and is small enough that Kylo assumes that it’s a single serving. He takes a large swig, and then winces as something like engine fuel slides down his throat. Ren laughs from across the table and slides over a small cup to sip out of instead. 

Soon the sound of sizzling meat delivered on platters, and glasses clinking and sloshing, drowns out half the conversation. In a nearby corner, a drummer beats out something arrhythmic and yet still recognizably music. The smell of food and foreign bodies waft past on every breeze, as well as the smoke of smoldering herbs and something unrecognizable, clouding the rest of his senses. It’s supposed to be part of the appeal, but it’s a chaos that Kylo doesn’t feel part of.

So he keeps drinking, despite hating the taste. Others are drinking from pitchers of ale, constantly refilled by bar attendants of various attractiveness, but the smell of it has an earthy quality that turns his stomach and the color reminds him of piss. This amber liqueur goes down easier. You just have to force yourself to swallow and down it goes before you have time to think twice. Just like life.

Ren pours himself drinks from the same bottle, and keeps glancing at Kylo with a look that’s hard to read. Even when he uses the Force, he finds that Ren is a closed book. Be that as it may, if he wanted to kill Kylo, he probably would have done it already. He’s a more honest man than Luke Skywalker ever was. Whatever else he’s thinking, however secret, Kylo isn’t afraid of it.

“I’ll take that.” Ren’s voice is suddenly close, strangely warm in his ear.

Kylo looks up, confused, and then feels Ren’s hand on his own. He’s holding onto the liquor bottle but hasn’t poured any into his cup.

“You’re not a drinker,” Ren comments with a low chuckle. He tugs the bottle from Kylo, his rough fingertips dragging over Kylo’s own as he does.

“Sorry,” Kylo mumbles. The alcohol has made words difficult to imagine, let alone say, even as his blood runs freer. He looks at his empty glass and tries to remember how many of them he has had. His hand tingles where Ren touched it. He gives it a little shake, splaying his fingers wide.

When he looks back up, Ren is grinning at him over a glass. “It’s a celebration, Kylo. Don’t need you drowning yourself before we’ve gotten the make of you.”

Drowning. He’d been drowning before all this, he remembers. Reaching for the light, just as he was told, only to feel darkness tug at his ankles and pull relentlessly downward. He’s wrenched himself free of both light and dark now—he’s free, and it’s unnerving, the way he floats without a tether.

But Ren is right. He’s not a drinker. It’s doing things to him that he doesn’t like. Kylo sits back in his seat so hard that it thunks against the floor, and rests his palms over his thighs.

“Damn,” Cardo says somewhere close by. “I was hoping he’d get a little more lively. Face like that, what a waste.”

It takes Kylo a moment to realize that they mean him. He looks up and frowns. 

Trudgen waves his hand at the bar attendant and grunts for her to return to their table. “There’s one for every type, Cardo. Don’t get hung up on jealousy.”

Ap’lek gives Kylo a sharp glance, though, and a glance up and down his body that feels almost like the slice of a blade.

There’s a charge in the air, ready to explode from a single spark. The Knights have been raucous since he met them, but now Kylo can sense something even more primal than violence flowing through the group. He sees Kuruk run a hand up Vicrul’s inner thigh and can’t look away. He hears Cardo laughing and murmuring explicit poetry to their bar attendant, and hears her gasp softly—but not with displeasure.

He knows what this is, even though his mind is fogged. And this is nothing like the stupid game of spin-the-lightsaber, which had ended the instant Voe’s turn wound up with the saber choosing him (she’d looked at him as if he was her enemy, and his chest had gone tight and his breathing shallow). That had been all awkwardness, and worse, and the feelings had been easily shoved down and forgotten.

The energy surrounding him now is raw and free, but he is neither comforted nor seduced. Not while the events of the past few days are still swirling around in his head.

Grunting under his breath, Kylo pushes his chair away from the table and pulls himself to his feet, willing himself to stay upright despite the haziness of his vision. “You’re right,” he says to Ren. He walks past the man, using the back of his chair for balance. “I’m not a drinker.”

He expects them to laugh at him as soon as he leaves but he doesn’t wait to hear it. Without looking back, he makes his way straight for the exit and the cool dark that waits outside.

The swinging door shuts behind him and a breeze hits his body, cool and crisp, and he suddenly realizes that he’s hard. A rush of shame, coming from everything he tries not to think about, makes him grimace. 

His hands clench into fists and he tries to sit down on a bench, but everything fits differently in the jacket and trousers compared to his old robes and it’s all too tight. “Kriff,” he mumbles to the night.

Finally, he leans against a column and closes his eyes. He can hear murmurs in the back of his thoughts, like always. The alcohol keeps him from truly thinking, but it doesn’t help him escape the voices. Only the burning did, and only for a little.

_ Embrace the shadow. That’s what will make it all better. _ The voices seem to like that and maybe if they’re happy, they’ll be quieter. The Knights will like it too. And Ren. And then he’ll have approval and a place to belong. It’s not a well-thought-out plan, but it’s something he can put a tether on while he drifts. 

The tightness in his trousers diminishes eventually and he sinks down onto the bench. It’s quiet out here, except for the constant noise in his head. He pulls out his lightsaber and stares at it, turning it over. A relic from an old life. He burnt his Jedi robes and he can still remember the smell of the scorched wool, but he kept this.

“It’s not bad,” says Ren, suddenly appearing out of the night to stand by his side. He looks down at the saber. “I assume you made it yourself?”

Kylo squares his shoulders at the interruption of his solitude. Brow narrowing, he swallows and nods. “It’s part of the Jedi training.”

“Wouldn’t know.” Ren laughs and takes a seat next to Kylo. He’s a big man, broad and heavy, and gives off a heat that combats the cool breeze. With his knees spread wide, he feels close, oddly close. People don’t usually get close to Kylo unless they’re threatening him. But Ren’s voice is soft when he says, “Never bothered with that Academy your uncle put together.”

“Did you steal yours?” Kylo asks, nodding at the red-bladed saber at Ren’s waist and then glancing back up at the man’s rugged face. 

There’s a connection with the Force between them, but it’s hard to discern any details about Ren. Even his outfit is mostly artifice. The cape, the mask, the voice he puts on like an actor on a stage. His actual features are dramatic as well, as if carved from a block of marble, but Kylo can’t be intimidated when looking at those eyes. There’s humanity there—it must be why he wears the mask.

“Took it off a body, sure, if you call that stealing.” Ren meets Kylo’s eyes.

Kylo knows he’s been caught staring, but he doesn’t look away. He’s been the object of staring his entire life, whether they looked wary, fearful, full of awe, or jealous. After a lifetime of that, surely he has earned a chance to stare blatantly himself. 

“I do call it stealing,” he says. The alcohol still flooding his system has clearly made him bold, because he doesn’t regret the words as they come. “You didn’t earn it if you didn’t even fight for it.”

Ren shrugs. “What makes you think I had anything to prove to that dead Sith?”

Kylo still hasn’t broken his stare. Ren is holding something back, he can sense it. Even without his mask and his act of Master to the other Knights, Ren’s not presenting his true self. Kylo is trying to figure him out. 

There’s a solidness to him, but not untouchability. When he revealed his bare chest, it was all sculpted and scarred muscle, burnt in a dozen places by more than just accidents. He’s old enough to be a war veteran. His hair, too, has a particular style, a set of braids that are more than random.

“You look like you want to touch my hair,” Ren says with a little chuckle, leaning in and cuffing Kylo’s chin with the side of his hand.

It should be a demeaning gesture, but Kylo feels a flush of heat in his cheeks, and he doesn’t snap back. “I’ve seen those braids before,” he says, slowly, ignoring the mocking in Ren’s words.

“Right, you’re Organa’s kid.”

That makes Kylo snap upright, his stomach churning. “It doesn’t matter whose child I am.” 

“It does a little.” Ren’s gaze has gone serious, his jaw a little squarer. “These braids? They’re traditional husband braids from Alderaan as it was before the cataclysm.”

“Oh.” Kylo looks down at his hands, clenched as they rest on his knees. Despite the subject, a part of him is always curious. Alway collecting scraps of knowledge.

“Yeah, Snoke told me you were related to the Princess,” Ren answers. “But that had nothing to do with my choice to keep you on. As you can guess, I’m not exactly tied to all the traditions of the homeworld.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Kylo says under his breath. “She never told me much. Barely even mentioned the braids.” 

“I’m really not surprised.” Ren lets out a long sigh. He looks out into the night. The moon gleams off his eyes and a thick white scar on his neck that shines like a burn mark, but unlike the darker ones across his torso. Kylo finds himself staring at the way this one cuts across his thick muscles, the way it rolls with every breath and word. 

“Alderaan wasn’t exactly a place where you could embrace your shadow,” Ren continues after a moment, his voice thick with drink though each word is still distinct. “Kriffing obsession with keeping everything the same, and if it wasn’t perfect, you had to pretend it was. For the sake of reputation. I would have destroyed myself if I followed their rules, even if the planet hadn’t been squashed to dust. If I hadn’t discovered Ren.”

Somewhere behind them in the cantina, there’s half a dozen other Knights all devoted to the same concept. But right now, it feels like just the two of them. The man with his red saber and his quiet self-assurance, and Kylo, who barely even knows his own name.

“Do you remember fighting Skywalker?” Kylo asks, his voice coming out husky but—he hopes—not emotional.

“Green lightsaber, cocky, self-righteous bastard,” Ren says. “I remember. Wasn’t sad when I heard a temple dropped on his head.”

Kylo swallows hard. “Back then... I wanted to know more about you. You were right.”

“Of course I was.” Ren shifts, barely noticeable, but it means his shoulder brushes against Kylo’s. Even through the fabric Kylo can sense a pulsing energy in the man, like a planetary core. “I had a strong sense that you weren’t like him.”

Kylo doesn’t know who he’s like, if anyone. He recalls Luke’s face lit by a green glow, arms tensed to strike, the Force sour like venom all around him. He’d seen it in his nightmares before, but had been foolish enough to think that it would remain there. No matter the blood they share, it’s comforting to know that he’s not like that man.

“You say Ren kept you from destroying yourself,” Kylo says slowly. “That’s what brought me here. You said I should do what I want, well. I want to know my shadow. I want Ren.”

Ren chuckles. “I see.”

Kylo realizes too late what it sounded like. He sets his jaw, though, and looks up to meet Ren’s eyes, bold enough to say that he will not be humiliated.

Ren’s eyes are bright, though, even in the dark of night. There’s nothing condescending in them. “You talk a good game. If you follow through...I’m starting to think we could use a Kylo Ren in our group.”

He claps Kylo on the back before getting up, swaying slightly, and returning into the cantina.

Kylo lets out a huff of air into the coolness once his solitude returns. His pants are uncomfortably tight again and his thoughts swirl, indistinct and shadowy and twinged with pain and heat, but no longer floating. They’re tethered to Ren.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves some canon from Bloodline, so if you aren't familiar with the plot from that, it might be worth a google if you're confused. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who enjoyed and/or commented on Chapter 1. This chapter is a beast in terms of length, but still a slow-burn for the relationship. But there's an outline and we've got both a destination and a lot of action along the way. So hopefully you don't feel teased.

Kylo has never slept well. Either it is an unrest that keeps him lying there, awake, muscles taut, for hours—or dark and vicious visions disturb the rest he manages to find. Sleep is merely a necessity to stave off death, in the end; a biological function that he can neither perfect nor get rid of. He lays himself down at the appropriate times and sleeps—or not—as his demons will it.

Everyone knows this. Except everyone he has ever known is dead or has abandoned him.

“I thought it was the clothes,” Ap’lek says over a shared meal in a foggy, chill dawn. “But maybe trash is just your look.”

They’re mostly finished, but Kylo still picks at the remains of porridge. He ignores the comment.

Vicrul leans over and suddenly grabs his jaw, turning it right and left before Kylo wrenches it away with indignation. “Someone kept him up last night,” Vicrul says, and gives Cardo a sharp look that’s obvious even behind his mask.

“Bantha crap,” Cardo says flatly. “Wasn’t me.”

Kylo has seen all their faces. Some of them have lines around their eyes, or graying hair, but they’re not all his seniors. “I don’t need a nursemaid,” he snarls at the group. “It’s none of your business how I sleep.”

“We work best in our prime, that’s all.” Ren’s steady voice breaks through before anyone else can speak. He props a boot up on the edge of their firepit, his face neutral as it so often is. “We unleash the shadow on others. Not our comrades.”

Vicrul rolls his head in a semicircle and lets out a huff of breath.

“He’s not my comrade,” Ushar growls under his breath. “Not yet. I don’t kriffing care what you and Snoke have planned.”

Rage and bile twist around Kylo’s throat, but he has no power when it comes to this. He cannot produce a “good death” out of thin air and so he is at their mercy. It doesn’t make him a child, but the helplessness feels the same.

“I’m not keeping him on for Snoke,” Ren says.

Snoke had described his relationship to the Knights of Ren as an analogue to a master and henchmen, though with a clear respect for the power of Ren. For their part, the Knights paid Snoke’s opinion some heed, which had seemed to confirm that assessment. Kylo wasn’t even the first apprentice to be sent by Snoke to them. After just a few days in the Knights’ company, however, he senses a far more complicated situation.

“If any of you boys are starting to doubt the autonomy of my judgment,” Ren says with a dry laugh, “my fighting hand is always ready for a workout. But here I was hoping we’d show Kylo a way of life that was better than that. We have a common cause, don’t we?”

No one takes him up on the offer for a fight. No one had really wanted a fight in the first place. That is what Ren reminds them of when he leads.

Kylo watches him as surreptitiously as he can, reaching out with the Force. But he might as well be sensing the Force of a mountain. Ren is darkness made flesh, without even the flicker of a moving shadow. No, that’s incorrect. He is an unstoppable force. Like an ocean, black and bottomless, moving over everything in its path without caring what gets crushed and sent to the depths. If there is anything beneath all that, it is too well-guarded to sense.

Meanwhile Kylo’s own darkness is still wild, pulsing, clawing at his ribs and the backs of his eyelids. They are different kinds of power, surely.

A pale sun breaks above the distant horizon and the Knights rise up to break the camp. Kuruk and Cardo argue over something inconsequential as they roll sleeping mats into bundles, and Trudgen seems to ponder the decision for a while before shrugging and smothering the remainder of their fire.

Ap’lek moves up behind Kylo and murmurs in his ear, “If you need help getting to sleep, I’m willing to lend a hand—or a mouth. I have a taste for pretty trash.”

“No,” Kylo says.

Ap’lek moves off, laughing.

It’s not the first time he’s been propositioned among them. It won’t be the last. They treat sex as if it’s as natural as breathing and Kylo doesn’t—hasn’t—has never. For all the expectations surrounding him, more now than ever before, he says no.

But the looks, the touches, the words, and the way his body responds without his intention, have begun to rattle one of the locked boxes inside his head. There are many of these boxes, neatly partitioned off over the years so that he might be  _ better _ . Safer. Approved. When the world is out of his control, at least he still holds the keys to these.

Memories stir and bob to the surface, however, of the nights he spent lying awake in the Jedi Temple hearing muffled cries of pleasure from nearby rooms. These days he lies awake and hears the Knights, with cries less muffled, and the boundaries are no longer so solid.

The memories he shoves back in their place, and he pays no heed to the rattling of the locked box. It doesn’t stop the physical sensations, but he chooses to ignore them. It’s not a new choice.

-

_ How are you settling in, my friend. _ Snoke’s voice slips in while they’re flying on the Night Buzzard. There’s no warning. There never is. Kylo always feels a twinge of guilt for not feeling as comforted as he should be by Snoke’s attention and care.

_ They haven’t accepted me yet, _ he thinks in response, while looking around the ship. The light is dim, the energy low. There’s no comradery at the moment, they merely share the same space.  _ Killing Hennix wasn’t good enough. _

_ You are so hesitant to bring death. _ Snoke’s voice is low, like a cat’s purr, but it’s as much chiding as it is familiar.  _ For so long they’ve told you that it’s the worst thing you can do. _

Snoke understands so much, knows so much, and some of his knowledge includes things that Kylo has long denied. It is frustrating, then, when he sees weakness where there is none.  _ Death is the equal to life in the Force _ , Kylo thinks.  _ But that doesn’t mean I crave dealing it. _

_ Of course,  _ Snoke says.  _ It’s why I suggested you to Ren and did not send you off to find Sith Holocrons to learn from. You have your own path, my boy. _

Ren. The name of a man and a philosophy both. Kylo thinks of the way the Force has betrayed him, tormented him, filled him with conflict. Old religions would tell him that it is his fault. He hopes that Ren offers another option. Ren-the-person has a peace that Kylo aches to understand.

If Snoke hears these thoughts, he doesn’t comment on them. There is quiet for a moment, while Kylo casts his glance around the room and feels naked without armor or a mask. 

Snoke continues, _ I am sure an opportunity will come to prove yourself an equal to the standards of Ren. Your old friends betrayed you and I doubt they have moved on. _

Voe’s face comes quickly to mind. Kylo wishes, with a sharpness that steals his breath, that he had been more determined when he threw her off that cliff. She deserved for him to be a “monster”. Why should she live while so many others die? A decade of mistrust and exclusion have told him everything he needs to know about her, and he is done pretending otherwise. His shadow is restless for her fate to be in his hands once more.  _ Do you know where she is? _ he asks.

_ They, _ Snoke corrects.  _ Voe and Tai both have disappeared off all legal tracking systems, but my sources suggest that they have been asking questions as they follow your trail. Well, Ren’s trail. He has been discreet but not stealthy. _

Kylo forces himself not to picture Tai’s face. He nods. The lightsaber strapped to his back feels like its own source of gravity, irritatingly heavy, and he rubs his hands together, restless at not having something for them to do.

After a lifetime of routine, he finds the instinct-driven nature of this new group unsettling. The Knights are not all hedonism and darkness, and they are in no hurry. The Night Buzzard is currently moving on a mission for a bounty, to refill their coffers with goods that they can trade in markets where stolen materials attract unwanted conflicts.

Next, Ren had suggested, they might seek out more lost information about the nature of Ren. Their path is as intellectual and spiritual as it is physical, Kylo has begun to understand. 

It is not like the Jedi. This is good, but he still feels on edge, under scrutiny without knowing exactly what he can do to claim his place.

_ You haven’t been paying attention to the news _ , Snoke continues after Kylo has sat silent for some time.

As if Kylo cares what the galaxy is up to. As if he was ever going to be allowed any say in it, when even his own family of heroes saw him as a problem to eliminate.  _ No, I haven’t _ , is all he says in reply to Snoke.

_ If you have any doubts about your choice, perhaps you should. I admit that I instantly felt for you, when I learned what had been discovered, but I was also filled with pride and validation at the potential I have always seen in you. _

It is deliberately vague. Yet even knowing that, Kylo’s interest is piqued and he narrows his brows.

_ You should look at what the Senate has done. I think it will interest Ren too. Then we should talk again. _

It all sounds so casual, yet when Kylo opens his neglected holopad, he sees notifications from his mother among the others and feels an instant pit in his stomach. Snoke is gone—somehow he knows this, even though the man has never really been gone from his head since the beginning of their friendship—but the whispering voices in the back of his head are suddenly busy, incoherent and yet insistent. His focus goes hazy and he closes the holopad without reading any of it.

Later. Not in front of everyone. Whatever it is, he can wait.

When he glances up, Ren is staring at him. He thinks of what Snoke says but says nothing to the man.

-

Kylo’s saber fills the forest with blue light and he can feel the Force around him shift when he slams it against his holopad. Again and again and again. It sizzles and melts, and the stone beneath it glows orange. Instantly unusable and yet he cannot stop slicing at it. He reduces it to a misshapen stain on the broken stone and it is not enough.

Above him is an endless dome of clear sky, without even a moon around this planet to block out the galaxy. Only trees—and, somewhere far away, the Knights of Ren.

He screams and the trees around him shudder and lean away. He screams again and slams his saber into the rock in front of him until it shatters into molten-edged bits.

It feels good to scream and then to catch his breath, chest heaving, hands trembling. For so long he has stared betrayal in the face and stood frozen in place. No more. Not this time.

_ Senator Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan, has always been known to have been an orphan adopted by Queen Breha Organa and her consort, former Senator and war hero Bail Antilles Organa. What has not been known until now is that she knowingly hid the knowledge of her birth parents from the galaxy. We have now had confirmation from the Senator herself that she is the daughter of Darth Vader and has been aware of this since the end of the Resistance. _

Kylo had not gotten past that first notification before knowing he would destroy the holopad. Now, whatever his lying parents have to say to him is in pieces on this random world.

How dare they? How could they? Speak about him as if he was some aberrant creature, some changeling, when they had known full well the fated bloodline they had birthed him into. They had known all along and yet  _ he _ had been the one to blame his entire life. His mother and uncle had decried the Dark Side even as it flowed in their blood.

Kylo is the grandson of Darth Vader. Lord of the Sith. Right hand of the Emperor himself until he met an untimely end. Snoke is not the only one who feels validation right now. Ben Solo is dead just as Anakin Skywalker had died, to make way for a better, greater person. One who is not tied to weak and shameful roots.

They had kept his heritage hidden from him in an attempt to exorcise it from his soul, to make him the purest tool that the Light Side had to offer. Like them. Like  _ Skywalker _ . And when that had failed, as it always would have failed, they had conspired to eliminate him.

He has no doubt now that his parents had given their tacit permission to his uncle. Whatever love they had shown to him, he recognizes now as conditional. He had been a fool to seek any acceptance with them. They had loved nothing more than the mold of the perfect child that they had envisioned and had endlessly tried to force him to fit into.

All his misery, his despair, his shame, comes from this single source. They knew what his destiny would be before he was born, and all their efforts to change it had only made it more sure. They had taken every path away from him, and now he both knows this and knows why he is so strongly called to the only path left to him.

He is the heir to Vader and this changes  _ everything _ .

When he stares at the saber in his hand, with its blue like his uncle’s eyes, icy and still like a frozen lake—

He remembers the day he made it. The hope that had filled his heart when he thought that maybe it would all be okay. He could not be a pilot but if he only conquered the darkness in his heart, then he could be a Jedi and save the galaxy one day.

His hands shake and he screams again, killing Ben Solo in his mind once more. What a fool. What a dead fool.

Power flows through his fingers, coming from some deep well inside him that once scared him but no longer. The metal of the saber’s hilt digs into his palms. Without thinking, he crushes it with the Force until the kyber crystal is laid bare.

The forest around him is flooded with his rage, and it is a marvel that it doesn’t light on fire.  _ Do it, _ says the voice in his head.

_ Grandfather? _ he thinks.  _ Has it always been you? _

There is no answer, only a surge of power. He swallows, cradling the crystal between his fingers, and then he violates it. He bleeds the crystal until it cracks, until it glows red, until it burns his hands. 

It is raw and beautiful now. It screams and throbs, but it holds power without shattering. Now, he thinks, it fits him.

-

A bright sun rises above the trees at last and Kylo realizes that he hasn’t moved in half a day. No, that is a lie, he has paced the clearing between these trees, his boots scattering dead leaves and bits of destroyed rock. His hands are burnt and cut, the trees around him have finally stopped trembling, and he feels neither hunger nor weariness.

Something has finally awoken inside of him and it is riding him. He is but a beast in the hands of a wrangler, but it is more intoxicating than any drug. It is even easier to  _ move _ now. He starts back toward Ren’s camp, and each step feels like it will launch him forward.

The Knights are loitering, but not for him, when he returns. There are six; Ren isn’t there.

“You’re not dead then,” Trudgen says. They all stare at him. Trudgen hits Kuruk in the arm. “You owe me.”

“Idiots,” mumbles Vicrul, but he looks disappointed.

They still don’t see him. He feels so much stronger now, and they are shrugging it off as luck. “Far from dead,” Kylo says. He grabs a towel to wipe off dried flecks of blood from his palms. “I left to kill Ben Solo. I had no intention of dying along with him.”

Cardo and Ap’lek share a look, but they’re masked and if they share thoughts, Kylo cannot hear them. His own are overlaid with the whispers of someone—maybe the Force, maybe his grandfather. Today he feels louder than the cacophony in his head.

Ushar, unmasked, steps forward. His face has always seemed incongruous with his personality. He has a broad chin, high cheekbones, wide set nose and eyes lying close to his face; there would be beauty in that face if not for the seething that lies constantly in his dark eyes. Without Ren present, there is not even a hint of submission in his stance. He moves to stand before Kylo. “You sound an awful lot like you’re trying to convince us of something,” he says in a low rumble. “Is this your idea of a ‘good death’, then?”

A flicker of rage churns his stomach. Kylo tosses his bled crystal at the man’s feet. “Convince you of what?” he asks, the words cutting into the cool morning like a blade. “The truth? There is nothing left of that man.”

Ushar makes a cold sound—not a laugh, but something far more humiliating. “What a moron you are.” He kicks the crystal back to Kylo without even looking. “You made yourself weaponless to prove a point.”

The man is as tall as he is, but broader and armored and he expects to be taken as a threat. Kylo closes in instead, only an arms’ length away. “Weaponless? Do you forget that I was Luke Skywalker’s most powerful student? I don’t need a lightsaber in my hand to defend myself.”

“That’s some pretty great confidence you’ve got there,” Cardo says from the side, arms crossed over his chest, while Ushar gives a death-like grin. “But it’s ridiculous, Kylo, you have to see that.”

They don’t know yet, Kylo thinks. Whatever past has led him to them, they see it as tender and innocent, something to be patronized. He meets Cardo’s eyes and does not look away, as he feels the burning of anger gathering the Force around him. The anger has a life of its own, and they are but bystanders in the grand scheme of things.

But Ushar hisses and unhooks his war club from his belt. “The boy’s feisty this morning. That’s fine. It’s been too long since I heard someone beg for mercy.”

The low stream of anger warps into a river of fury inside Kylo, burning its way up his throat like acid. He regrets ever coming to them when he did, instead of staying with Snoke and biding his time. His second impression will have to be much stronger than the first. He must wipe it out as he has wiped out the rest of Ben Solo.

“Is that who you think I am?” Kylo asks, gesturing to all of them. “A spoiled child who will beg for mercy at the first moment of pain?”

“You’re trying too damn hard,” Ushar growls.

The man charges forward, then, almost faster than the eye can see. His war club arcs high and large, blocking out the sun, a deadly extension of his form.

Kylo has spent a lifetime facing danger as if it was inevitable. Each time things moved in slow motion while he felt trapped, watching from a distance, and the overwhelming emotion gave him no advantage. Now it is the opposite—now he feels a dozen sensations all at once, paired with enough energy to split this planet apart. To split Ushar apart.

He wheels out of the way of the war club and flips out his blaster from its holster, slamming the hilt of it into Ushar’s ribcage as he slides past him. The man’s armor keeps it from causing any real damage, but the point is made. He earned a hit.

One of the knights laughs. He can feel the others’ stares.

Ushar turns and attacks again, shifting when Kylo does, anticipating just enough of his movements to make it a challenge.

Kylo stops him with the Force, and it feels like a whirlwind he controls with his hands. This is like the blaze at the outpost. Nature itself transforming in his hands.

Ushar reels, but his stance is strong and he digs in his heels and pushes back without pause. His club grazes Kylo’s shoulder as he forces it through, his torso behind it to block all exits.

Dipping, almost touching the ground as he dodges, Kylo moves behind him and pops upright just in time to slam his blaster into Ushar’s ear.

The man roars, whipping around, droplets of blood flying, and Kylo takes a step back to avoid him. Even so, Ushar’s club catches the end of the blaster and sends it hurling towards a nearby tree.

Ap’lek cackles from the sidelines. Kylo can feel the others watching intently. They are not rooting for a victor, he can feel, they are only interested in the manifestation of the shadow.

He could pull the blaster back to him with the Force, but Ushar is nearly on him. There is a voice in the back of his head, chanting encouragement that he cannot understand, and he thinks of his grandfather again. Thinks of all the stories he’s heard. This power that runs in his blood.

Before Ushar can beat him to the ground, Kylo stretches out his hand and squeezes.

The other man stops short, his breath locked in his throat, the Force suddenly a vice around his windpipe.

Kylo is too breathless to speak, the air hissing through his clenched teeth, but he knows. They will know soon enough. He is Vader’s heir.

Before any of the other Knights, let alone Ushar, can react, Ren appears and leaps between them. He’s a quick-moving shadow, his landing heavy enough to shake them both. His eyes are a furious blue when he grabs them both by their dominant wrist. “Enough,” he says, and the energy churning around the camp is dampened instantly by the force of the single word.

“I just need to knock him down a few pegs,” Ushar says. He tries to yank his wrist from Ren but cannot.

Ren turns his scathing look on Kylo.

Kylo doesn’t try to pull his wrist away but he can only say, nearly spitting the words, “He taunted me.”

“This is why you need a leader,” Ren says, and his voice has fallen low, barely audible over the heavy breathing. “You will turn your shadow upon yourselves and tear your very brothers apart. You do not  _ listen _ to the Ren. You do not even try.”

“I wouldn’t have killed him,” Ushar says.

Kylo remembers how it felt to hold Ushar’s throat in the Force, to squeeze, to threaten the life. But no, he wouldn’t have snapped his neck.

Ren drops their arms and spreads his own wide, turning to face the rest of the Knights. “Are you petty, small-minded men, then? Fighting for scraps of respect? Where is the darkness in that, I ask you?”

Kylo notices that Ren has kept his saber at his side the whole time. He has not drawn a weapon. He has not made any attempt to intimidate.

“Pardon us, oh master,” Ap’lek says with scorn. “We are not pure acolytes like you.”

Ren laughs, then, so that they all relax. He grabs Ap’lek’s shoulder. “There is no purity. There is only knowledge.”

No one has anything to say to that. Even Kylo, his rage like a creature inhabiting his ribcage, feels as if he’s been cut down at the knees.

Ren walks away, throwing his last word’s over his shoulder as he does. “Kuruk. Prepare the Buzzard to depart. We have a bounty to earn today.”

A crow caws overhead, and Kylo’s heartbeat sounds loud in his ears.

“I told you,” Cardo says with a dry laugh.

“Burn in hell,” Ushar tells him as he puts the war club back on his belt.

Trudgen leans down and picks up the reddened kyber crystal, eyeing it keenly before he tosses it to Kylo. “If you’re just looking for a band of murdering scum, you won’t find it with us.”

“I know that,” Kylo snarls. But he has no energy to spare on them. They have all been rebuked together.

His rage has not been sated but it has been subdued. Even Ushar has a calm face as he drags his mask down over his head.

Kylo pulls the blaster to him and tucks it and the crystal back into his holster. His hair flops over his brows, stringy with sweat, and he shoves it out of the way. When he catches sight of himself in the black metal of the Night Buzzard, he almost laughs at his ragged appearance. This is not who he is meant to be. This is only the beginning. He cannot claim his destiny all in a single day.

Ren has a smile for them all when they board the ship and everything is as it was before.

Kylo watches and knows that that must change. But he can wait for the opportune moment.

-

It is easy enough to bring in a bounty, Kylo learns, when you work as a team. It requires trust and a splitting of the reward, but the work is as easy as breathing.

This mark hides away in a remote village with barely more than a nod at security—his greatest mistake, as Kylo and Ap’lek take out the guards without even breaking a sweat while the others block off all exits. Cicadas scream all around as the sun bakes them in their black garb. Vicrul drags the man from his house, while he pisses himself in fear, and Ushar makes him scream much louder than the cicadas.

This time Kylo watches, present, not a spectator outside his body like he’s so used to. He thinks of his grandfather and the legend of terror that has survived him in the galaxy. There is power in bringing fear—but Darth Vader was more than a guard-dog of the Emperor, surely. Kylo does not want to stoop to Ushar’s level and set his sights only on sadism. His destiny must be more refined.

At last, growing weary of the spectacle and the sweat dripping from his face, Ren steps in and decapitates their mark with a neat slice of his saber. The head tumbles to the ground and Vicrul scoops it into a bag.

“Good thing they don’t mind us bringing him in dead,” Kuruk mutters.

“I could have left him alive,” Ushar says with a shrug. “The shadow didn’t want me to.”

Kylo sees a fleeting look cross Ren’s face at that, but they board the spaceship and turn in the head for the bounty without further commentary. It’s enough money to stow away for emergencies and still spread a little among the crew for entertainment. Drinking, brothels, gambling…sometimes the shadow wants simple things such as these, it seems.

At the end of the day, however, Kylo’s jacket and trousers stick uncomfortably to his skin and his scalp itches, his lips salty with dried sweat. The roaring beast that had given him impossible energy this morning has gone to sleep, leaving him to a familiar exhaustion. It’s a disappointment, but perhaps it was too much to expect elsewise. In any case, he is not interested in entertainment.

The town has a hot spring to offer and Kylo accepts. His muscles ache from effort and lack of sleep, and his palms sting from where he’d clutched the crystal too tight—only half a day ago, but it feels like a lifetime.

He hands his clothes to a bath attendant to be laundered and gladly sinks into the pool of hot water. It’s large enough for a dozen, but for now he is alone. The water scorches him, almost too hot to bear, and his skin is red even before he scrubs at it with a cloth. It is so far removed from the cool fountains at the Jedi Temple that his mind relaxes, settles, and even the voices are barely-audible whispers among his thoughts. Kylo drops to the bottom of the pool and lets out all his breath, coming up feeling cleansed as if with liquid fire.

“Glad to see you here.” Ren’s voice drifts across the pool. “You were starting to look foul.”

Kylo glances up quickly upon realizing he’s not alone, and almost turns away instantly at the sight of so much bare flesh. He’s not used to bathing with company, but it’s foolish, childish, to care about it. Yet he is grateful for the heat of the water that hides any embarrassed flush. 

Ren drops his towel at the pool’s edge—the only fabric covering his body—and gives Kylo a quick, cool glance before stepping into the water as well. 

Before he slips beneath the surface of the water, Kylo’s eyes dart swiftly to take inventory, almost without intending to do so. Below Ren’s broad, scarred chest, the burn marks snake down his right hip and thigh before fading over his calf. His left side appears almost undamaged, and as for the rest of him…it’s not just his face that seems carved by an artist rather than an accident of nature.

It’s a relief when Ren relaxes into the water and is no longer on display. Kylo swallows a wave of heat that’s risen in his throat and finally looks away. He pours some cleanser into his hand and works it through his hair without a word.

Ren grunts after a moment. “This morning was a fluke, I hope.”

Kylo gives him a side-eye and a frown. “You know what I learned. Things are different now.”

“Oh, I know. But I didn’t expect you to turn into Vader’s bitch overnight.”

It feels like a slap to the face. “My grandfather—”

“No, you can shut up about that,” Ren says before he can finish his sentence. His eyes are bright when they meet Kylo’s. “Do you think I care whose blood flows through your veins? I don’t. But if you think I can regard that foul breathing lump of metal that somehow reproduced with anything other than disdain, then you don’t know me at all. And apparently I don’t know you.”

Ren is  _ angry _ . It is new, to see him boiling with this level of emotion. But unlike his rebuke previously, which had been withering, his anger is like a spark tossed onto a pile of kindling.

“You  _ don’t _ know me,” Kylo replies, rage coiled in his chest already, entwined with resentment. “Just like everyone else, though, you have expectations for me as if I should be trying to impress you. You’re not my father!”

He assumes Ren’s anger is all words. He assumes wrongly. The words are barely out of his mouth before Ren has moved across the pool and shoved Kylo against the wall of it with a forearm across his chest. Kylo feels the breath knocked out of his chest as Ren presses close, trapping him.

Kylo curls his fingers into a fist but does not move, feeling his pulse speeding to a wild rhythm. He is vulnerable, Force or no Force. If this is an act of intimidation, he will refuse to acknowledge it. “You’re not my master either,” he says through clenched teeth, despite the heavy weight of bare, wet flesh against his.

It feels like a lifetime before Ren moves. “Maybe not,” he finally says, the anger leached from his voice. His eyes drop down and then back up again, and Kylo can feel the trail of his gaze like fire across his skin. “Not your father, not your master, so then what am I to you, Kylo Ren? What are you to me? If that display was meant to remind me of Vader, well, Vader had no friends and he served no shadow, only the whims of a dictator.”

“He destroyed worlds,” Kylo says. Even if it were not a matter of blood, he would still rise to the defense. How dare this man, this unnamed man, act as if he’s better than one of the greatest Sith Lords in history. “What have  _ you _ done with your shadow that’s so powerful?”

Ren laughs, with another flash of anger. “Don’t lecture me. He destroyed my world first, remember? But that was not following his urges. What sort of satisfaction is there in standing on a ship, surrounded by slave-soldiers, and pressing a button to obliterate a planet without even spilling a drop of blood? You think that satisfied the darkness in Vader?”

“He wanted more,” Kylo says back, without thinking. “If my uncle hadn’t killed him—”

“You don’t know that,” Ren spits. “You weren’t even alive. You’re just latching onto a fairytale and trying to make yourself a big man that no one can hurt, and it’s a kriffing insult to everything that Ren stands for.” He shifts the arm pinning Kylo to the pool’s wall, shoving off from him. As if there is no point in them standing close enough to share breath, when Kylo is such a disappointment. 

The rage that rises in Kylo sickens him and he pulls his hand back to strike this man. To strike back against being underestimated, humiliated, treated like a fool.

But Ren moves faster. He catches Kylo’s strike before it lands and bends his arm back, relentless strength nearly pulling Kylo’s elbow from its socket. The jolt of pain makes his breath hiss through his teeth.

“Just stop,” Ren says, his voice gone low and tired.

Kylo squirms to free himself, but Ren only twists and locks his arm into place. Even with the slipperiness of the water, Kylo cannot free himself from the bruising grip. Just when he goes to twist his entire body, Ren moves closer and Kylo freezes—feeling the entire length of his body now naked, immobile, against the other man.

There is a rush of blood that he hates, that he refuses to acknowledge, and pulse beats faster with rage and something more. “I will not be told who to be, not anymore,” he says defiantly with a jerk of his chin.

“Except by a ghost of the past, it seems.” Ren gives him a look that goes deep, too deep. “Kriffing Vader…” He sighs. “You know the rest of my Knights? They like to prove points. Like Vader. Like Snoke. They use their shadow as a tool for other ends. I thought you were different when I first saw you.”

Kylo does not pull away. “I am. That’s where you’re wrong.”

“Am I? You’re so desperate to have someone to tell you what to do, but you won’t even admit it. I knew from the moment we first spoke that if I told you to drop down to your knees and suck my cock, you would do it, just to have someone who approved of you and would give you direction.”

Heat floods through Kylo with almost nauseating intensity and his mouth goes dry. “I—” Images of the past, of dreams, threaten to make their way out of his locked box.

Ren ignores his protest. “But I thought you understood what I was offering. That you had chosen me for a reason. I saw—well, it doesn’t matter now. But this Vader shit? It makes you just like everyone else. Sure, the Knights will respect you, and Snoke will be overjoyed. But I’m devoted to Ren and Ren alone, and you’re not there yet. So don’t pick a fight with me, Kylo, and let’s just move on.”

Then he releases the lock on Kylo’s arm and pulls away, and the water of the pool floods back between their bodies. 

The water feels cooler to the touch now. Kylo’s skin is aflame, his breathing shallow. Something worse than shame churns in his stomach, just as desire makes itself painfully aware between his legs. The voices in his head are as incoherent as ever, drowning out the ability to make any rational thought.

Ren leans back against the pool once he reaches the opposite side. His face gone neutral, his body no longer tense. “Just don’t bring up Vader around me, and we’ll get along just fine.”

But Kylo knows, even in his confusion, that he doesn’t want that. He stares down at his hand, at the lines that the kyber crystal left in his palm when he bled it red. He had done it in honor of his grandfather, but is it what he  _ wants? _ That has been the question since he first arrived here. After a lifetime of burying all wants for the sake of others, it is a question that is still difficult to answer.

He is tired of making decisions. He is tired of trying to understand himself. 

“I have no intention of becoming Vader,” he finally says.

Ren glances up.

Kylo swallows before filling the silence. “I want to be more.” It’s all that needs to be said.

A smile plays at the corner of Ren’s mouth. “You’re trying to get my approval again.”

It’s another one of his jokes, but this time Kylo will not stammer and flail. He lets out a choice vulgarity and waves a hand at Ren. “And how exactly am I supposed to prove otherwise, hmm? Pointedly declare that I have standards, and won’t just drop and suck your cock on command?”

Ren laughs. “Now then, no. That declaration is quite unnecessary.”

Kylo bites his tongue and glowers.

Ren stretches out his shoulders and lets out a long exhale. Back to his usual persona, he walks across the pool. His eyes flit to Kylo’s mouth and Kylo thinks he’s going to move close again, maybe to do something more—but instead he puts a hand on Kylo’s shoulder and squeezes. “Relax,” he says. “We’ll talk after you’ve had a bit of sleep, I think.” And then he climbs out of the pool, grabs his towel, and walks off while slinging it around his hips.

For a long minute, Kylo just gazes after him as he walks away. The humiliation has gone, and his unwanted desire still throbs insistently, but the usual accompanying shame is…gone. There is a freedom in its absence that he lingers on, appreciating. 

Then the exhaustion comes in a wave again, and Kylo sinks back into the water and finishes his bath. He decides, before he lays himself down to sleep for the night, that he won’t tell Snoke about this conversation.


	3. Three

One day Kylo wakes up and it’s been a month. He notices the date as he inputs the coordinates into the Night Buzzard, when Kuruk is nursing a hangover and no one else cares to fly.  A month since he was forced out of the last home he can remember. 

It feels like yesterday that he was pulling himself from of the rubble, away from his uncle, and crying out for aid that never came. It feels like the day before that when he was burying his face in a pillow, a child barely half his uncle’s height, with a voice in his ears telling him that he should be angry while he wept the pain of separation.  The date says that was thirteen years ago. Thirteen years that he can barely remember, and now another month. 

Kylo shakes it off as he sets the Buzzard on its course. Those thirteen years belonged to Ben Solo. That life belonged to someone else. It doesn’t matter that he can barely remember any of it. Yet even as Kylo Ren, a month has gone by as if dreamlike, with only a few moments to hold onto. 

Perhaps the mistake was to choose the name Kylo. As a child, he had thought to make something that was his very own, and then his mother had smiled patronizingly at the discovery of it and said, “Like Skywalker and Solo? No Organa?” and he had grown angry and run from her. She had been both right and wrong—right about what the name could be, yet wrong for how he’d come up with it. Now he thinks he should have tried again for something newer.

Ren has yet to reveal his true name and the legends don’t say how Vader picked his name. Despite Snoke and Ren's disapproval, Vader is his quiet obsession. They can only see flaws in his grandfather because they are not weighted with destiny the way Kylo is and Vader was. They can’t understand the connection.  Darth Kylo is no name at all, though—and Kylo doesn’t necessarily want to be a Darth, but he can’t stop thinking of Vader. He’d rather think of Vader than the frustrations that haunt his dreams, even when his dreams are often more vivid than life.

While Ren and the others swap out weaponry and make upgrades to their armor, Kylo visits their alchemist alone. He holds out his bled kyber crystal and asks what Albrekh knows of saber housing.

The creature gives him a sharp, cold gaze first. “You’re fresh.”

“If you think you’re the first one who’s told me that, think again,” Kylo says.

Huffing, the creature reaches out for the crystal that Kylo has in his hand. “I heard about you. Ren says you have potential with the Force that calls to him and to you. Not quite Sith, not quite Jedi, mm?” The hairy hands hold the crystal with surprising gentleness.

Kylo does not answer. 

He has noticed how they all speak of Ren like a religious leader they cannot quite comprehend. As if he’s a prophet made of madness and mysticism and unknowable power. Kylo has looked to myths and legends for inspiration, so he does not judge them for their reverence. But he doesn’t want to be one of them. He would rather know the unknowable, and meet Ren’s eyes as an initiate rather than a worshipper.

“You cracked this.” The creature clicks its tongue several times, brushing a claw over a fracture in the crystal’s structure.

“It is still strong.” Kylo says, uninterested in perfection. “Give me casing and I will adjust it to the crystal’s needs.”

The alchemist sighs. “So old-fashioned. I'll give you the materials you need.”

Kylo has already drawn out a structure for his new saber. It will not be easy to wield, but he is not afraid of the challenge. Nor does he fear the potential pain during the learning curve of a new, unsecured weapon. Better a rush of fresh, hot pain, than the dull ache he usually endures.

“And your mask?” the alchemist asks.

“None,” Kylo answers. He has decided against imitating the other Knights while they are still sizing him up. “No armor either.”

The creature gives him a gaze touched with disgust. “Foolish.”

“We’ll see,” Kylo replies.

Ren has impressed upon him that being a Knight of Ren is not truly about rules or guidelines. The dress code and the initiation are metaphorical. The darkness within, and the shared bond between brothers, naturally reveals itself in their chosen garb. They hide their faces as a submission to the Ren that rules them—they are something greater than their physical form. And as for the good death?

_ “Every man thinks he's touched the darkness,” Ren had said. “Even the ones who think themselves good and pure. They think they’ve been tempted. Most of the ones who end up in front of me, demanding admission, are even more deluded.” _

_ “You said darkness wasn’t simply death,” Kylo had interrupted, frowning. _

_ “I did.” Ren had grinned without any humor, his eyes flat as a winter sea. “Holding life and death in your hands and making the choice of fate, seeing the potential you are snuffing out of existence, and the chaos you are bringing into existence… That’s not "just" anything.” _

_ Kylo's stomach had rolled on itself, as if part of him was shrinking away in terror. But there was no terror. He remembered their last mission, when he’d sliced a man’s face in half with his saber and felt that life bleed out into the universe around him. He had felt satisfaction.  _

_ “The good death,” Ren says after a pause, “is just to make sure that when faced with a difficult choice, you don’t surrender and run crying back to the Light because you’re too afraid of your own power. You can’t force it. It’ll happen when it happens. I have a feeling you’ll pull through, Kylo, but you’re still on probation until I see your true darkness.” _

The message had been clear. The approval Kylo wants cannot be achieved through following rules, but only through a test of his very soul. But this is why he joined them. To free his soul, and more. So much of him needs to be freed.  A mask and armor can wait.

The saber, on the other hand, cannot wait. It is as if by bleeding it, he had turned it into a living thing, writhing and impatient in its crystal shell. It calls to him with a low purr even during his brief hours of sleep. Unlike Ren’s, his crystal burns red but hot, spilling forth energy as soon as he tries to contain it in the casing that the alchemist had given him.

Trudgen comes over to watch as Kylo works on his new saber hilt, quiet at first and then offering suggestions. His mismatched collection of trophies is assembled with a level of craft that Kylo has to respect, but he mostly seems fascinated by the kyber. Kylo thinks he catches a glint of greed in Trudgen’s gaze—he might not murder Kylo himself to gain the crystal, but he certainly plans to scavenge his corpse one day.

“It’ll explode on you just as like as not,” Trudgen says, watching the heat from the kyber turn the metal glowing hot at the edges.

Kylo sets his jaw and deactivates the crystal once again. “It’s unstable, but not chaotic. I just haven’t found what it needs.”

“Hm.” Trudgen squats, resting his hands on his knees. He’s got a thick jaw, heavy brows, and large piercing eyes that dominate his face. It’s easy to dismiss him as a huge mass, though, until you get close enough to see the detailed trophies worked into his armor.

“If I used the traditional style, yes, it would explode.” Kylo isn’t used to speaking as he works, but staying silent feels wrong somehow. He sets his crystal down and picks up a few abandoned bits of metal, shuffling his design around before grabbing a welding torch. “Too much energy. Constant energy, not a build-up. It needs to be vented.”

The hilt is huge and bulky by the time he’s added the vents, even without a cover over the wires and insulation. But it fits in his hand, and lights into the shape of a cross when he activates it. The venting hisses close to the leather of his gloves; he can feel the heat, just on the edge of burning the skin beneath.

“Well,” Trudgen says with a half laugh, “it looks better than Ren’s glowstick, I’ll give you that.”

Kylo doesn’t smile. He feels the Force pulse through his blade, pushing at his grip, forcing him to tense his muscles to keep the weapon in check. The crystal strains at its containment like a dog on a leash. This is no weapon of peace and defense.  _ Mine, _ Kylo thinks, with a wave of pride.

-

_ “What are you doing here?” he asks. He sits alone on his bed, his room lit only by a brazier of fire. _

_ “I saw the look on your face,” Tai says softly, brow furrowed. He closes the curtain that serves as a door behind him. “Voe should have had better self control. She hurt you.” _

_ He knows his face is flushed with embarrassment. “I didn’t want to kiss her either.” _

_ “I know that,” Tai says softly, his mouth relaxed in something more intimate than a smile. _

_ Ben sits forward, and he should be wary and nervous but somehow he’s not. He’s fourteen and he wants to believe that— _

_ Tai moves forward and drops to his knees in front of Ben. The bed is low, so Tai’s chest is level with Ben’s hips.  _

_ Ben feels like he’s not quite there, like he’s floating, like this can’t be real. “What is it?” he asks, but his voice cracks. _

_ Tai looks up and rests a hand on Ben’s thigh. “I thought I should tell you,” he says in a voice barely louder than a whisper, “that I know who you wanted the lightsaber to point to when it was your turn. And I wouldn’t have looked at you like  _ _she did_ _. I know it’s not much, but—” _

_ Ben kisses him. It’s just an instinct, the action of a boy accustomed to being offered nothing, let alone his deepest wants. There is no time for regret. _

_ Tai’s touch is soft and gentle as he cups Ben’s face. His mouth is sweet. _

_ Ben is greedy and his hands cannot be satisfied. _

_ “I want you to be happy,” Tai says breathlessly. _

Just as he moans and sinks into the kiss, Kylo wakes up. He swallows the moan so fast it hurts his throat and glances around, but no, he is heated and frustrated but alone _. _

Even in the dream, he had known it was too good to be true. Because it was. That night was more than a figment of his imagination. It just hadn’t gone like that in reality.

It takes a long, cold shower to clear his head, let alone the rest of him. The Night Buzzard has two small heads, and only a single shower, but it’s before dawn according to their latest circadian rhythms and so he remains undisturbed.  He feels an unusual sense of regret when his erection fades away. The afterimage of the dream lingers longer, to his dismay. 

Kylo makes his way to the training room and turns his focus towards the Force as a distraction. He left his saber behind, but he’s learning more ways to use the energy that burns its way through him. More than just lifting rocks.

He throws himself against the punching bag, the bars, the mats on the floor. His reflexes need to be stronger than his exhaustion, stronger than the haze that follows him around most days. Without an opponent it feels like acrobatics, but he knows it is more.

The Force propels him in every direction, and it feels more like he is reining it in than unleashing it. His muscles burn, his lungs ache, and still he pushes himself—this is what Ren has spoken of, being a vessel for power. What is he, a single man, in comparison to this power?

_ I am so proud of you, _ Snoke says in his head.

Kylo pauses, sucking in air, sweat dripping from his chin.  _ Why? _ He asks.  _ This is nothing. _

_ Where is your pride, heir of Vader? _

Kylo bites back thoughts about what Ren said about Vader.

_ You overthink things, my boy. _ Snoke’s voice is warm, firmer than usual.  _ When all I have ever wanted for you is to embrace your power. It is raw and strong. Some would be afraid of it, but I see only glory for you if you master it. _

Kylo returns to his training, feeling the Force as it affects his balance. He vaults himself out of the way of an invisible foe.  _ I want more than glory, _ he thinks. In truth, he’s not sure the concept of glory even has an appeal.

_ Of course. _ Snoke always understands.  _ But when you master the darkness inside you, glory will be inevitable. I can foresee it even now. I expect to see something much greater than the boy who left me, when we next meet again. _

The voices are murmuring in his head, even as Snoke’s voice fades away. Validation, pride, belief. These are things he has craved. Yet they are not enough when Snoke gives them. They ring hollow, and he grits his teeth in frustration as he slams his body against the punching bag, knocking it off its stand to roll across the floor. 

He can’t remember Snoke speaking of glory before. Of power, yes, and how it wasn’t something to be feared, but it had been with gentle sympathy. Snoke had been an encouraging friend, more understanding than Tai. Now there is something else in his voice.

Heir of Vader. Snoke is excited about that, and so is Kylo, and surely that is all that has changed between them.

Though his body screams for both rest and fuel at the end of his workout, he is not done for the day.

“Early to bed, early to rise, and yet you still look like shit,” Ap’lek mocks when he strolls into the common area, bare chested and hair in a tangle around his neck. He smells of musk—of Cardo’s, in all likelihood, from how often Kylo has heard their rutting in a nearby chamber when he tries to rest. “You need your beauty sleep,” Ap’lek says.

“I need to be off the ship,” Kylo mumbles in reply.

“Restless?” Ap’lek grabs a flask from the table, left over from the night before.

“Of course he is,” says Ushar as he joins them with Vicrul close behind. His hair is slicked back and his skin gleams cleanly. “He’s a twitchy bastard, we know that.”

“If relaxation turns me into you,” Kylo says, meeting the other man’s eyes, “then why would I want it?”

Ushar hisses, but without heat. He’s growing used to Kylo. Which is not the same as friendship but it’s better than the fake politeness of the Jedi Temple. 

Ap’lek laughs. “One day Kylo’s going to get a full night’s sleep and we’re not going to know what hit us.” It’s only half mockery.

Kylo feels the corner of his mouth twitch, and he meets Ushar’s eyes while leaning back in his chair. They don’t fight as enemies or rivals anymore, as if their lives were on the line, but they still fight. The inner shadow they all share likes a practice combat.

“Want me to knock the wit out of him?” Vicrul asks Ushar with a savage grin.

“Go for it,” Ushar says with a yawn. “I could use a show. We haven’t had a good mission in days.”

Vicrul tosses Kylo his saber. “Come on, then. I still need to show you what an idiot you are for sticking to that stupid jacket instead of a proper breastplate.”

Kylo merely slides the saber into its holster. “I won’t be needing it, but thank you for the concern.”

Vicrul’s eyes glow with a flash of rage, and he lights up his scythe. “Just because I won’t kill you doesn’t mean I won’t leave a few scars, brat.”

Kylo stands up and leans toward him. “Are you expecting me to be afraid when you say that?”

The tension is thick, and the voices in his head scream excitedly. It’s better that the Knights aren’t actually fond of him yet. The inherent challenge sets his blood afire.

Vicrul licks his lips, knuckles whitening in his grip around the scythe.

“Not in the main chamber,” Kuruk growls, and shoves Vicrul toward the door.

No one needs to shove Kylo. He forgets being tired, being tormented, being frustrated. How many times have they sparred in the last month? How many in the last week? It’s easy now.  There’s nothing to prove. No glory or pride to be had in either win or loss. Only darkness that begs to be released.

Vicrul kicks the punching bag out of the way as they enter the training area, and then stands, rocking his weight from foot to foot.

Kylo strips off the leather belt that holds the holsters for his blaster and his saber, and drops them to the side. He’s wearing a black sweater and pants, nothing more. The Force is all he needs for this fight, or so the voices in his head whisper to him.

Vicrul cocks his head to one side. “Hope you’ve developed some more skill since we last matched,” he says, “not just style.”

From the sidelines, half the other Knights have followed them in to watch. He's glad to see Ren with them.  


Kylo plucks a weight from the rack on the wall and flicks his fingers to throw it at Vicrul’s head with the Force. “Actions speak louder than words, Vicrul.”

Then there is a whirlwind, a flurry of weapons and limbs, and the air is loud with the whine of Vicrul’s blade and both men’s grunts of exertion.

Some of them have training in their Force abilities, but Vicrul is a brute. He warps the power that runs through his blood as if it is hot iron to be beaten into the form he desires. He’s mastered the cruelty of the darkness, harvesting the fear and strength from his enemies, but that is as deep as he has delved into the Force.

Kylo isn’t afraid. He never has been, not of them. What are they compared to the demons he has faced?

Yet when he gets close to Vicrul, spinning and dodging and striking between the swings of the scythe, he can sense a desire emanating from him. It is more satisfying to humiliate one who is not easily defeated and so Vicrul wants to  _ break _ Kylo. Simply for the sake of it. And he wants Kylo to know that that’s his intent.

Kylo grits his teeth and lets it fuel his own strength. Weapons, armor, masks, all of them are unnecessary. Whatever power is at his command, it needs no such enhancement. It burns within him, scorching and blistering, and he is not afraid of the pain. It hurts just the same to try and shove the power away.

Their shadow does not demand blood—they are comrades, after all—but it will have pain nonetheless. Kylo thinks, in the heat of the combat, that maybe it is what he’s meant for.

The others watch intently. Kylo is used to being stared at, knows well the way the energy crackles when all eyes are on him. But instead of jealousy or disdain, he feels something more from the watching Knights. Interest, a hint of awe, even naked desire.

It suddenly crosses his mind that Snoke has stared at him like that. Hungrily.

But the thought slips away as soon he catches the glint in Ren’s eyes, while he dodges yet another strike from Vicrul. Ren’s guarded expression has dropped, his interest on full display. His eyes shine from within, his lips parted, and some sort of satisfaction rolls off him like a wave to the shore.

Heat roars in Kylo’s ears and his pulse flits rapidly in his veins. It should be enough that he himself wants to do this, but Ren’s desire is what pushes him over the edge. His control vanishes, his thoughts erased.

With a surge that comes from depths he does not understand, Kylo pushes with the Force and lifts Vicrul off his feet. The man arcs across the room with a single whip of Kylo’s arm, thudding against a wall, his head whipping back.

A chorus of whoops from the sidelines applaud Kylo’s move.

Vicrul is back on his feet in an instant and the fight is not over. But Kylo has found a well of rage and fury and crashes into his opponent without holding back. He rips the scythe from Vicrul and slams him back into the ground, wrenching at his armor so that it almost bends and keeps the man from moving.

“Enough,” Vicrul shouts, slamming a hand into Kylo’s ribs. A half dozen expletives leave his mouth and his eyes are hot. “We're done. Kriff, you’re like a wild animal.”

“I could have told you that,” Cardo says from the sideline. “Good show.”

Kylo tastes something metallic in his mouth and realizes that he’s bit his cheek. He swallows the blood and steps in, offering a hand to help Vicrul to his feet. “Next time, maybe you’ll have developed more skill,” he says under his breath. 

“That tongue’s going to get you killed,” Vicrul answers.

But the heat is fading. The darkness has been purged. Here, they can end a fight without feeling resentment building on one side or another.

“Show’s over,” Vicrul snaps at the audience as he grabs his scythe and unbuckles his breastplate.

Kylo’s body screams at the overuse—he will be sore later, and they have a mission to complete. His throat feels raw.

Ren walks past him and cups one of his elbows with a broad, warm hand. “I think you enjoyed that almost as much as I did,” he murmurs. His eyes are dark, but he only raises his hand to clap Kylo’s shoulder and then walks out of the training room.

How small, how undramatic, is the sentiment that undoes him, said in a low voice that only the two of them can hear. It is the sort of thing that parents, mentors, teachers and peers have held back from him for decades. He has choked on the need for approval with every waking breath and yet, just as he finally puts aside his desperation for it, that is when he gets what he always wanted. And more. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, more.

The rush of blood and heat nearly makes Kylo dizzy, and the voices in his head are all drowned out by one that repeats the mantra,  _ More.  _ Need surges in him so strongly that he cannot shove it down, cannot fit it into his locked box of forbidden things.

_ Don’t think, _ he tells himself as he makes his way to the head. No one is in his way.  _ Don’t think at all. _

Everything is hot and tight and beyond his control. If it was ever in his control. He keeps the water warm this time, turning it on full blast until the steam billows around him.  _ Don’t think. _

His hand trembles when it reaches for his cock, eyes closed, and he bites down on his tongue to keep from moaning. The pleasure is on the verge of pain. A part of him holds back—a part of him is used to staying on the edge, wound up and never released. But no, he can’t do that anymore.

Kylo stops trembling after the first stroke of his hand, and then it’s just wet and heat and squelching rhythmic sounds and it’s not enough, it’s not what he wants, but there is a tide of pleasure rising and it’s not enough but he needs it all the same.

He rests his head against the wall in front of him, furiously thrusting into his own hand. His breath comes quick, too quick, and the head of his cock is so sensitive that it hurts—but he can’t stop. Not now. Not after crossing this threshold at last.

Release, when it comes, is messy. He had forgotten that. His dreams never get this far.

Kylo’s body heaves and shivers, and he drops to his knees. He lets the water sluice over his head and back, washing away what he has just done.

But where he expects to feel shame, he only feels disappointment. His breath pushes at a tightness in his chest, where sits a desire that has not been sated. The place where he mingles with his shadow, where he is trying to create unity, is a hopeless tangle of wants.

Kylo sees Ren’s eyes flash before his mind—he see’s Tai’s too—he shakes his head to shut them out, but in vain. There is a gnawing emptiness at his core. At this moment, no longer hidden by denial, it hurts like an open wound and begs to be healed.

But for all that things have changed, he knows better than to imagine that this emptiness could be filled.  _ Don’t think, _ he tells himself once more.  _ Don’t remember. _ Disgust at his own foolishness kills the last of the screaming desire still keening through his body, and he lets the water run cold.

Soon enough, the voices in his head begin again and leave him no space for further thought or memory.

-

The Knights of Ren don’t always share meals together, but Kylo makes a point to attend when they do. Even if it’s just a pot of stale rice and rehydated vegetable of unknown origins mixed with some strong-flavored protein cubes. Here, at least, he’s not alone, nor does he need to hide.  Belonging, purpose and approval still seem within reach among these men. 

He sits quietly without listening to the casual conversation.  The lighting on the Night Buzzard is rarely brighter than necessary to see what’s right in front of you. Half the ship lies in darkness even when its crew is up and awake. Ren loves metaphor, but in this case, Kylo discovers, it’s to make things more comfortable. Kylo is not the only one who finds that light alone can be harsh and overwhelming.

Only that’s a metaphor too, isn’t it? There is light, from lamp or sun, that gives him a headache and makes him curl his hands into fists and clench his teeth. But there is Light, too, just as painful as it tried to burrow into his head and cut out any darkness it could find.

He’s too tired to think about such things. He’s always tired, but sometimes it is just a weight on his shoulders, and other times it is gravity in his very bones and he feels like a black hole.

“Snoke gave us the coordinates,” Ren’s voice breaks in through his tiredness. Whatever they've been talking about has become interesting enough for him to listen. “It’s another Jedi ruin, but marked ‘deadly’ on more than a few holomaps. There’s a lot of theorizing as to why, but theories are just words. What it requires is a little risk.”

Kylo looks up and sees Ren’s eyes flit to meet his own.

“Well,” Cardo says with a shrug. “At least this time we don’t have to worry about Skywalker. The man himself or his damned Force intuition.”

“Shame Kylo didn’t finish him off, though,” Ushar grumbles.

Kylo swallows and ignores the accusation. Outside this ship, the rumors continue to fly. His mother has been forced out of the Senate due to her lies about being the daughter of Vader. Remnants of the Empire are plotting to rise again in the Unknown Regions—though the Republic refuses to verify this. The Jedi Temple’s destruction is still a mystery, but stories are that his uncle’s ship flew off the planet and left an astromech behind, and only student’s bodies have been found. 

Not all the students have been found dead. Three are missing. He wonders, briefly, where Voe and Tai buried Hennix, and how long it will be before they give up on tracking him down by themselves and put up a bounty—or recruit help from his mother. She must be itching to bring him to justice, for even if she doesn’t know all the facts, she must  _ know _ that her fears came true and he is the monster she always thought he was.

Something nudges his foot under the table and he looks up, surprised as always at any contact.

“Think we might run across anyone?” Ren asks. They’re all looking at him for information. “What was that old man you were with last time called?”

“Lor San Tekka,” he says. He shakes his head. “No. If it’s a dangerous place, they won’t expect us there. We never did anything that we knew would risk lives. We were...cautious.”

Kuruk grunts. “I find that hard to believe.”

Ap’lek nods, and Cardo flicks his arm in a gesture that is meant to mimic Kylo’s when he removes his belt before a fight.

“Kuruk has a point,” Ren says, with a flicker of a smile and a shrug. "Are you sure?"  


Kylo grimaces. The last few weeks have been spent trying to make them forget that they ever met a Ben Solo, but now he must remind them otherwise. It is hard to force the words out. “The man those Jedi knew only followed orders, and Skywalker would never have ordered us to any place marked deadly, no matter what Jedi artifacts could be found there. Things have changed since then. But they don’t know the extent of it.”

Ren nods. “Well, I can’t really argue with that. I just hate meeting Force users unaware. It really sours a mission. Death, I’ve got no problem with. I’m always ready to face down death.”

He tosses his holopad on the table and pulls up a visualization of the coordinates that Snoke provided. It’s a tiny moon, unmapped, dead to most scanning signals for some unknown reason. Kalaanthor is the modern version of its name. Kylo remembers it from an ancient text; he remembers the discussion of whether or not to visit it, back when they were always flying about on historic quests. 

There’s a few theoretical points mapped on the hologram, where old Jedi fortresses were once located. The gravitational pull of the nearby planet has changed dramatically since the last time anyone made it off the moon alive, however, so it’s impossible to know how the moon’s structure has shifted.

“We can be there by morning,” Kuruk says. “Assuming everyone’s ready.”

“I’m ready  _ now _ ,” Ap’lek says, impatiently. 

“It’s been a while,” Trudgen agrees, and his eyes dance with excitement, “since we did something truly for Ren. The greater the risk, the greater the reward, right? A real reward, not just kriffing credits and bodies.”

Ren smiles and leans back in his chair. “See, boys, sometimes I have my doubts, but you eventually show that your priorities are in the right place. I have a good feeling about this. Something interesting's waiting for us here.”

The conversation turns after that to preparations, and one by one they leave the table.

Kylo pulls up the history of Kalaanthor on his own holopad and scans through it, refreshing his memory. The others head off, some to sleep and some to enjoy themselves, but he stays in the dim light and wonders about what variety of death might be waiting for them on this moon.

“Things haven’t changed that much, have they?” Ren asks out of nowhere.

Kylo looks up to see the man still seated at the table, watching him. “What?”

Ren leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “You say things have changed since then, but you’re still cautious.”

It’s not a rebuke, not really, but Kylo burns at the underlying sentiment in the words. “I’m not afraid of danger, if that’s what you mean.”

“It isn’t.” Ren’s smile is more teeth than lips.

Kylo swallows and holds his gaze in silence, while Ren waits with steady curiosity.

He cannot help but wonder what Ren  _ wants _ , and what he  _ expects _ of him. Transformation? Or maybe that is too much, and he’s waiting for honesty. Because the latter is far easier than the former.  Kylo longs to admit that he is tired of the mixed signals. 

Snoke wants him to become who he was born to be, and Ren wants him to choose his own path and embrace his shadow, and Kylo thinks that maybe the voices in his head want him to finish Vader’s journey.  But none of that makes an impact the way his blood throbs whenever Ren casts an approving glance his way.  He isn't ignoring the implications of that, y et he knows from experience that he can't  have what his blood demands. 

Ren has not explained if his philosophy allows him to want to be wanted, but—  _ You’re so desperate to have someone to tell you what to do,  _ Ren’s voice repeats in his head, and it had not been said with admiration.  He should not be surprised, because of course it is a weakness, but it leaves his belly feeling hollow nonetheless.  


“I’m not waiting for your permission to do what I want,” he says aloud, shifting his face into as neutral an expression as he can manage. The words are a prophecy rather than a fact, but it doesn’t matter. “If that's the caution you think you see, no, that _has_ changed. But I did come to learn from you.”

Ren sits back up. He stretches out his arms over his head, rocking each shoulder to the side and then back to center. “Hmm. Well, I don’t know what else I expected. You’ve only been out of the Jedi culture for a few weeks. It takes time. I mean, when I was your age, I still thought I wanted to settle down on New Alderaan.”

Kylo frowns, not sure what he’s supposed to take away from that remark.

“You really need to stop listening to Snoke so much,” Ren says and then huffs, rises from the table, and rests his hand briefly on Kylo’s shoulder. “Master of the Knights of Ren? That’s not really a thing. Try to get some rest before tomorrow. You’re more likely to survive that way.”

He walks past, leaving Kylo alone in the dining chamber.

Reaching up, touching the spot where Ren’s hand had lain, Kylo lets out a long breath of air. 

It only takes a moment for the cryptic remarks to fall into place. It is not lying, or teasing, or mistrust, that has him feeling confused about expectations here. Ren’s just not his master. Or anyone's. It seems he doesn’t want to be. 

The realization comes with a surprising relief. Things have changed. He doesn't want the approval of a master, but something beyond that. Which means needing to know Ren better. Perhaps tomorrow, provided they are not facing death, he will begin to understand more.   



End file.
